April 24, Base to Camp I 19,500

These posts are a little behind because I can’t take my laptop above base camp.  It is too heavy. The environment is too harsh and I usually don’t have any energy left each day to post anyway.   It is now the 29th and I am back at BC so I will try and spend the next few days catching up.

I find myself talking about climbing gear and using nomenclature that is probably confusing to many especially around my home town of Columbus, Georgia – you know the climbing mecca of the south.   So I will take a few minutes to describe some of the gear we use and how we employ it.

Basically there are four things that can bring you to grief in the mountains: sickness, weather, falling and having something falling on you.  This ignores the occasional individual killed by his climbing partner, usually late in the season, with the proximate cause involving snoring or some other unpleasant bodily function.  The first two I will talk about at some future date.  About the only thing you can do to prevent something falling on you is to wear a climbing helmet.  Generally speaking the climbing helmet, sometimes referred to as the “brain bucket” is not going to make any difference on most of the mountain.  Think locomotive and oyster.  The one area where I thing it makes sense is the Lhotse face where you have a couple thousand feet of very steep ice but more importantly dozens of numb fingered climbers who drop cameras, water bottles (as an aside never put your name on anything) and everything else you can imagine.  Yes, Virginia, they have even been the unfortunate soul who having found no convenient rest stop along the way has dropped trou and relieved themselves at 23,000 feet.  I’m not sure a helmet will save you from a full water bottle that has slid 2,000 feet but it should deflect a Snickers bar – at least you hope it was a Snickers bar.

Everything else is to keep you connected to the mountain.  First we all wear a climbing harness which reminds me of the tool belts the telephone repair men use to wear.  It allows me to hang all the other gear and it gives me a central point to tie off any of the other devices.  In addition the harness is designed to allow you to answer natures call without unclipping from your “protection”.  When we talk about protection we are referring to one of the two primary ways we connect our self to the mountain – ice screws and snow stakes.  An ice screw is a hollow tube with threads on the outside that can be twisted into ice.  When placed correctly you could hang a truck of one.  However during the heating and cooling cycles on the mountain they can melt out.  In snow conditions a snow stake or picket is used.  It is a piece of “L” shaped aluminum sharpened to a point at one end that is driven into the snow.  Through a combination of these anchors a fixed line is run.  The climbers “clip” into these usually with a carabineer.  Those are the “C” shaped piece of metal that have a spring loaded gate across one side.  You see miniature versions in half the check out stands in Amercia.

Carabineers come in a variety of shapes including “bent”, pear shaped, wire gated as well as traditional.  Some have locking gates for when that rope just absolutely has to stay there.  The “biner” is usually connected by a “sling” which is a piece of very high strength webbing sewed into a loop.  The sling is usually slip knotted to your harness.   Now you might “go slip sliding” but it won’t be “away” because you can only go as far as the next anchor.  Of course that might be 75 to 100 feet.  Please remember fixed lines are designed to keep you from inconveniencing others by killing yourself and then being difficult to find.  At least all they have to do is follow the line.  Fixed lines have probably saved more lives than any other piece of equipment and only a fool would ignore the opportunity to clip in.  Of course if you take that long a fall and its probably going to leave a mark.  At the least you are going to need new underwear!

On really steep terrain we use a device called an ascender that again is connected to that harness by a sling.  It only allows the rope to move one way through it so if you fall it snatches you up pretty quick.  The final major piece of equipment is a rappel or abseil device.  This is usually a piece of metal that you thread the rope through in such away that as you back of a cliff and you can lower yourself down by maintain a small amount of tension.  Once you have all the gear on you sound like a wind chime anytime you move but it really does look cool!  It is advisable to avoid water sports while wearing.

The final crucial piece of equipment needed to climb Everest is a ladder, actually lots of ladders, but probably not for the reason you think.  The first part of the climb is over a glacier.  A glacier is moving river of ice.  In the case of Everest it is estimated to be 700’ thick and moving at the rate of about three foot a day.  Because of that it is riddled with crevasses.  Imagine holding a Snickers bar up and bending it in the middle.  The cracks in the top are precisely like the cracks in the glacier only without peanuts at the bottom.  Theoretically the crevasses could be 700’ deep.  It would be impossible to down climb and then up climb all of these cracks so we lay a 20 foot aluminum ladder across the top.  I know what you are thinking – that’s cheating!  Well I have a mind game for you.  Imagine two 20 story tall buildings set 15 foot apart with a ladder going from one roof to the other.  Now put on all that gear including crampons (those snow spikes that attach to the bottom of your boots) and walk across.  So that wasn’t too hard was it – as long as you don’t look past your toes to the street 200 feet below?  In all fairness the crevasse fades to black after 75 or 100 feet so you really don’t know how deep it is.  But what happens when the crevasse is wider than that standard 20’ Nepali ladder.  No problem.  We just lap the ends of two ladders about two feet and tie the ends together by rope.  Voila a Nepali extension ladder!  In 2006 we had one 4 ladder section crossing.  By the time you got to the middle it had bowed so much you were eye level with the other side.  This year we are blessed with only a few two section crossing although we have 36 single ladder crossings between BC and C1.

You might have guessed that the ladders, at least for me, are the scariest part of the climb.  Although frankly because you, if you are smart, are clipped in to a fixed line the worse that usually happens if you fall is what’s called “taking a dangle”.  In 2006 I was crossing a two ladder section that leaned slightly downhill.  For some reason my right crampon got stuck on the rungs of the ladder.  I just kept rocking it back and forth occasionally bouncing the ladder.  People began to gather at both sides of the ladder.  There were at least ten people not fifteen feet away and they can’t help me one bit – unless of course I fell at which time they could have helped pull me out.  I was pretty sure my crampon would come lose then too.  It must have been like watching a slow motion version of when Diaster Strikes.  I felt like the person who puked at a party.  Everybody feels bad and want to help but at the same time are really glad it wasn’t them.  At some point I found the magic spot and the ladder let me go.  I gave those crampons away and bought me some new ones – and I always avoid the cheese dip.